He smiled. “A generous spirit and a lively temper.” He stepped back into the kitchen, then returned with a coffee mug, minus the handle, filled with orange juice.
“Missed the freezer, did he?” she asked sourly. “Unlike my dishes.”
“No. Everything’s a loss. But this was still sealed. I figured you’d take a break eventually. How are you feeling?”
The broken handle jabbed into her palm, and she raised her hand to study the almost invisible white scar. “A little achy.”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t mean just your hand.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. “A little achy everywhere, I guess.”
A quick glance up, and she was surprised to see the answering color in his face.“If you’re worried about what we did last night, you won’t suffer any consequences. No diseases. And you won’t get pregnant.”
No consequences beyond semi-eternal damnation. “Another demon side effect?”
“The mingling of human soul and demon possession leaves males sterile. I imagine the same holds true for women, although I can’t be sure, since you’re the only one we know. Maybe Bookie could do some tests. . . .”
“Let’s not even go there. I don’t want to explain why we’re wondering.” She paralleled her arms across her belly. “Anyway, after my accident, the doctors told me I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“That must’ve been hard to hear.”
“At the time, they weren’t even sure I’d walk again. I’ve wondered, with my mother’s depression and delusions and my father’s early-onset dementia, if having kids was a good idea. Sometimes, after a night at someone’s vigil, it all seemed so vain and futile anyway. . . .”
He settled at the other end of the couch. “Life isn’t always madness and death.”
“Said the immortal man who kills demons for a living.” She quirked her lips at him to show him she appreciated his attempt—transparently halfhearted as it was.
He leaned forward, clenched hands dangling between elbows propped on his knees.
She watched him knead his thumb over the reven. “How did the demon come to you?”
His restless hands froze, and she regretted the impulsive question.
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “That was rude. I could see everyone got very uptight when Zane shared what happened to him.”
“It’s awkward,” he said softly.
“Right. Just because we—”
“It’s awkward to have your deepest flaw inked in demon stain on your skin.”
She nibbled at her lip. “I thought the demon entered through a physical wound, that the mark appeared over that injury when the demon healed it.”
“The wound is just an outward manifestation.” He took a breath, then said bluntly, “Zane was a coward. He tried to run away, not because he condemned the war, not because he thought he could fight for what he believed in somewhere else. He was afraid, and rather than confront his fear, he ran.”
“Then the snare caught him,” she murmured. “And the demon offered to let him go.”
Archer nodded. “Only to conscript him into a war that will never end. I’ve seen Zane hold his leg, where the wire must have cut him to the bone. I see him wondering if it was really so bad. And there’s the damn reven flashing neon purple, a reminder he didn’t have the courage to find out.”
She swore she felt her own mark shift beneath her, upsetting her balance. “It takes no special bravery to die.”
“You say that after all you’ve experienced in your work?”
She bristled. “I helped people die more peacefully, but it’s not like they had a choice in the end. Zane did. We did. Sometimes it’s harder to live.”
“Thanks to the demon, now you’ll find out how much harder it is to live forever, if a life of endless killing can be called living.”
She put her hands over her ears and pushed to her feet. “This night has been bad enough. No reflection on your lovemaking skills, really.”
Before she made it out of the room—and, dramatic exits aside, where exactly did she think she was going?—he said, “I tried to kill myself.”
She stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn around.
His weary voice sounded close, though she knew he hadn’t gotten up. “I wouldn’t have told you since your mother . . . But I think that’s why I resonated with your demon crossing over, that echo of self-inflicted violence. I tried to shoot myself. One simple shot to the head.”
She turned slowly. “The demon mark isn’t on your head.”
“I missed.” He didn’t look up. “Top rifleman in my company, and I missed.”
“I wish my mother had failed too,” she said.
This time he did look up, dark eyes bleak. “The pistol misfired, exploded in my hand.”
“Thus the reven.”
His chin jerked once in a reluctant nod.
“What . . .” She wanted to continue, Rifleman in what company? When was your day? but her historical curiosity seemed irrelevant in the face of the pain that plagued him still. “Why did you try to kill yourself?”
“I’d been wounded in one of the last battles of the war. Most of the men I’d fought beside moldered in unmarked graves. My father’s farm was gone forever. My sister had remarried and moved away, taking my mother with her. My fiancée . . .” He stared down at his flexing hand. “After what happened, I didn’t go back to find her again.”
He opened his fist, as if he could drop the sinuous black lines that marred his skin.
“Everything slipped from my grasp. Just like my exploding pistol.” A faint violet haze moved in the tarnished depths of his eyes. “The demon came to me and promised I’d have the power to hold on to something and never let it go. What it meant was, I could spend eternity throttling rampant horde-tenebrae and never erase the stain on my soul.”
He shook his head. “Demons don’t lie. They’re fallen angels, after all. They drop just enough tidbits of the truth for you to lead yourself into damnation.”
Sera leaned in the doorway, buffeted by gusts of outrage at the choice he’d tried to make. She wanted to scream at him, curse, as she hadn’t been able to when she was thirteen, flailing in the water with the bubbles of the sinking car churning around her.
She struggled to keep her voice even. “Time was, suicides weren’t even buried in the churchyard. Some might say you were damned anyway.”
“I didn’t care. Unlike your mother, I wasn’t driven by voices. There was no one left to speak.” He took a long breath. “But if I’d known about your mother before last night when you told me, I would’ve had Niall send someone else to talk you through possession.”
“Talk? How about sleep with me? Or kill me if my demon was djinn?”
“We did what we had to. I’m not asking for absolution.”
Did he mean the killing, or the sex? As sudden as a flash flood ended, her anger dried up, leaving her empty. “But you think I’d condemn Zane—or you—when I’ve ended up in the same place.”
She thought for a moment. “You said the reven highlights wound and flaw, both.” She smoothed her hands down her hips, as if she could feel the curving lines of the mark. “I was broken in my center, body, and identity. I’m the one people turn to for answers, but really I’ve only ever had questions. Why didn’t someone notice my mother was suffering from severe postpartum depression? Could we have prevented Dad’s decline? Why did that drunk bastard have to hit me? The demon promised me explanations. Instead I’ve had to face realities I’d never have believed before.”
His gaze had followed the path of her hands. “You catch on quickly. It took me much longer.”
Once again, she wondered how long. Zane, no older than his early twenties during the Vietnam draft, should have been past fifty. And he was the most recently possessed. That would make Archer—what?—eighty years old? One hundred?